Pivoted implements having elongated members disposed for cooperative engagement about a pivotable joint are widely used. In particular, pivoted tools such as pruning snips generally comprise two elongated members, typically made of stamped or forged metal or other suitable material, disposed for cooperative engagement about the pivotable joint. Typically, each member includes a jaw, having a working end and an opposed tang, and a handle conforming to the fingers or hands of the user and preferably molded onto the force-applying end or tang of the jaw. In the case of "by-pass" pruning snips, the jaws consist of two cooperable blades; in "anvil-type" snips, a blade cooperates with an anvil to perform the desired cutting operation.
Conventional molding operations used to form the handles of by-pass snips consist of positioning a jaw (i.e., the blade) having an aperture in a suitable cavity of a mold wherein the jaw is fixed in position with respect to the mold. As described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,715,122 to the present inventor, the space receiving the jaw communicates with a mold cavity for the handle portion. The mold cavity is subsequently filled with a fluid plastic material or the like, whereby the plastic material surrounds the tang of the jaw so that the handle is molded onto the tang. The same operation is separately repeated to form the handle of the other jaw which, in the case of an anvil-type pruner, is formed as an anvil. The two handle sub-assemblies are then inventoried as required.
The manufacturing of pruning snips or other similar pivotable tools then consists of bringing the apertures of the jaw/handle sub-assemblies into registration to install a separate pivot member, typically including a fastener, to maintain the jaws in cooperative assembled relationship about the pivotable joint. The biasing and latching mechanisms of the tool are next installed.
Accordingly, pruning snips of the type disclosed in the prior art typically comprise various components and require several distinct manufacturing steps followed by the assembling of sub-assemblies. Examples of such pruning snips are described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,073,059, issued Feb. 14, 1978, and U.S. Pat. No. 4,258,472, issued Mar. 31, 1981, both to Wallace et al.; U.S. Pat. No. 4,268,963, issued May 26, 1981 to Harrison; and U.S. Pat. No. 4,947,553, issued Aug. 14, 1990 to Bendickson et al. U.S. Pat. Nos. '059, '963, and '553 illustrate examples of by-pass pruners, while the '472 patent discloses a pair of anvil pruners.
The limitations identified above are also present more generally in the scissor art. However, in that art, attempts have been made to address these limitations. For example, die cast scissors produced by the intercasting technique permit a reduction in the number of steps required to produce these pivoted tools. Examples of tools manufactured in accordance with this process are disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,007,524 to Hannes et al. Although, as Hannes discloses, the intercasting method eliminates certain assembling operations necessary in the case of the prior art pruning snips discussed above, tools manufactured by the intercasting technique do not typically include molded handles and do not permit subsequent adjustment of the pivotable joint as desired by the user of the tool. Furthermore, these tools generally lack biasing and associated latching mechanisms.
In light of the foregoing, it can readily be recognized that prior art methods used to manufacture pivoted garden tools, such as pruning snips or the like, have certain disadvantages. These prior art methods typically require assembling two members which have been previously manufactured separately and installing various other components to provide the desired features, thereby increasing material handling requirements which generally translate into higher unit cost. Thus, it appears desirable to provide pivoted tools such as pruning snips or the like which can alleviate the problems associated with conventional manufacturing methods, i.e., which are engineered to lend themselves to functional assembling during, as opposed to subsequent to, the manufacturing process, or which otherwise reduce the number of operations required to manufacture these tools, while having all necessary features typically desired by users of these tools.